Trump issues “pardon” for seditionist convicted under state law

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President Trump said on Thursday that he would pardon Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk who was convicted of tampering with voting machines after the 2020 election. But the pardon would be symbolic, because Ms. Peters was convicted of a state crime that falls outside the president’s traditional clemency powers.

Ms. Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., was sentenced to nine years in prison after being found guilty of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove false claims that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against President Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Trump, who continues to repeat his lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, has embarked on a wide-ranging campaign to settle scores related to his effort to overturn the race. On the first day of his second term, he issued a sweeping grant of clemency to nearly all 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But the president has no power to pardon state crimes. Mr. Trump could not, for example, pardon himself for the 34 felony convictions handed down in a New York trial last year. Because Ms. Peters is in prison for a state offense, Mr. Trump’s announcement on Thursday was primarily symbolic.

“Tina Peters was convicted by a jury of her peers for state crimes in a state court,” Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state, said in a statement on Thursday. “Trump has no constitutional authority to pardon her. His assault is not just on our democracy, but on states’ rights and the American constitution.”

While Mr. Trump’s declaration had little practical effect for Ms. Peters, it was a reminder that the president has used his expansive legal powers to reward and protect his allies, even as his Justice Department has shattered traditional norms of independence by following his orders to pursue criminal cases against perceived enemies.

In just the last few weeks, Mr. Trump pardoned Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, apparently believing that he would defect to the Republican Party. He also pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who was prosecuted during the first Trump administration for leading a drug-trafficking conspiracy.

In one particularly strange case, Mr. Trump pardoned a real estate developer who had been indicted by his own Justice Department earlier this year.

I assume that there’s a clerk in Alito’s chambers working on a draft opinion explaining why until 2029 the equal sovereign dignitude of the states doctrine means that the president can execute the full powers of the governor of Colorado.